Overland to the Island tells the lively and frequently jaw-dropping story of Alan and Joan MacLeod's 1963 journey from Dunedin to the Isle of Skye in Scotland with their six children, aged five to fifteen. Alan MacLeod - a Dunedin farmer and former WWII artilleryman - whose grandparents emigrated from Skye to New Zealand in the 1860s, had decided it was time to reconnect the family with their clan ancestry and revisit old haunts from his days fighting in the Italian campaign. Travelling in a homemade house-truck called Holdfast - built by Alan using a Ford tractor engine, a city bus cab and the chassis of a WWII armoured scout car - the family embarked on an extraordinary adventure around the world.

Extracted from Overland to the Island: New Zealand to Skye with six kids in a homemade house-truck by Hannah Bulloch, RRP $45, published by Otago University Press (2025)

When you’ve been long at sea, the scent of land can curl to you. Singapore was a musk of tropical bush and wood smoke before its shapes and hues came into relief. Dozens of enormous steel-hulled cargo vessels, flying a diversity of national flags, were anchored off the coast. Around some, low wooden lighters clustered like ants
and streamed to and from the river mouth. Workers loaded and unloaded cargo, piece by piece, onto these small barges with red-and-green eye motifs on their upward-arching bows. At the murky wharf, clean white cruise liners were docked, while on shore mansions perched amid lush vegetation. To the MacLeods’ gaze, Singapore harbour was a window into an exotic, fascinating, enchanting world: the Orient.

As the day’s warmth peaked, the MacLeods disembarked abuzz with anticipation, then watched as Holdfast was hoisted by the ship’s derrick, dangling awkwardly before being set down on the wharf. Customs let the vehicle through, despite noticing the problem with its carnet. Alan asked around about campsites and was eventually told there was only one on the island – at Changi Beach. So they piled into Holdfast and a thoughtful stranger guided them on his motor scooter through the city’s cacophonous traffic – past bicycle rickshaws with brightly coloured canopies, behind fast-moving modern cars and crowded buses, between old trucks with cargo and people on their trays.

Shanties of rusty-roofed dwellings on stilts sprawled along the river’s edge. Monolithic modern apartment blocks towered over stately terraced shophouses painted in colourful hues. On some streets, laundry flapped like flags from poles jutting from upper storeys.

Vertical signs with Chinese calligraphy extended from shopfronts, while English or Indian signs sat above the doors of other stores. The streets teemed. Some people wore suits and ties or pressed skirts and high heels, while others were dressed in ragged tunics and sandals. A scrawny man walked with a pole balanced on his shoulders, a bucket suspended from either end.

The road then took them past fishing villages and farms among coconut palms. ‘Infinite variety of scenery on way,’ Marilyn wrote of the drive, scarcely able to take in all the novelty before her, let alone describe it.

At Changi Beach the MacLeods set up camp. Residents of the nearby kampong, or village, gathered around, keen to talk to the family and to help Alan attach the awning to the caravan. Soon there were dozens of curious onlookers. The area around the campsite was swampy but the facilities good. There was running water and Joan immediately set some to boil for their drinking supply. There was no bathroom in Holdfast, so they investigated the nearby toilet block and found squat toilets. This was going to take some getting used to. They didn’t know which
direction they were supposed to face and, unlike the locals, found squatting a challenge.

When night fell, although the moon was fat, the lampless beach and nearby streets were pitch dark. Joan and Marilyn cleaned up after dinner while four of the kids played near the caravan, swatting unseen mosquitoes tickling their arms and ankles. Then Alan realised little Malcolm was missing.

Alan scoured the streets and the beach around Holdfast, without success. He scanned the ocean, and listened in the gaps between the waves tumbling to shore. Then he spotted the blinking of a small bonfire several hundred yards along the coast. He strode towards it with what must have been growing anxiety. There he found a group of Chinese men and women crouched by the blaze, and asked: a boy, about so high, blond.

‘Malcolm?’ replied one of the men. ‘He over there,’ pointing into the darkness beyond the fire. Malcolm was playing with their children.

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It was now three weeks since the stormy morning on which the MacLeods had departed Dunedin. Climbing the hills north of the city, Holdfast had twice slipped out of gear. With the media attention it would have been mortifying not to even make it over the Kilmog. Alan tinkered with the engine till it ran smoothly. As they passed
through the small towns along State Highway 1, strangers who had heard about them on the radio waved. On the open road over the Canterbury Plains, Alan was satisfied to find the truck burning a gallon of diesel every 15 minutes and averaging 35–40 miles an hour. At 6.30pm they rolled up to the farm of one of his old army mates, just south of Ashburton, and spent the night in the farmhouse.

The next morning they woke to the warble of magpies. The sun shone as they headed north, stopping to browse the Addington Saleyards, buy spuds, then cook their lunch on the road’s verge. By early evening they’d reached the campsite near Blenheim’s Wairau River. It would be their first night in the caravan. When it came bedtime, the children found themselves in confusion as to where to sleep. In the truck’s accommodation Alan had designed the cushioned back rests of the two seats so they could swing upwards and lock into place as top bunks. Ginger and Shona climbed into these, while Flora and Malcolm claimed the seats beneath them. Cairine settled across the back seat of the cab. Marilyn, busy cleaning up after dinner, found herself beaten to all the beds. As her diary tells it: ‘Little sleep … started out by sleeping in shelf – too hot. Got down to the floor – too short. By motor – too narrow.’

During the night Shona fell out of her bunk onto Marilyn. Then Ginger tumbled from his, striking his ear on the motor hatch that doubled as a table. Marilyn finally got some sleep in a bunk after one of the others relinquished it for her at dawn.

That morning Joan cooked porridge – their first breakfast in Holdfast. It seemed to take an age to clean up, repack and set out. It was Malcolm’s sixth birthday but there was no celebration. They drove to Picton wharf, and under sunny skies waited to drive the caravan onto the Aramoana – the country’s first roll-on, roll-off train ferry, which had come into service just six months before.

With the vehicles, trains and passengers boarded, the Aramoana smoothly plied the fiords, then crossed the open sea of Cook Strait. On approach to Wellington the swells lifted, the boat rolling and pitching towards the harbour. The family stood on deck to see the city of Wellington, cradled by mountains, come into view – the first glimpse of the North Island for Joan and the children. That night they stayed at Hutt Motor Camp, where they dropped coins into a TV slot machine, absorbed by the black-and-white images and British accents.

Check out our interview with Hannah Bulloch here. Overland to the Island is available in bookstores now.